Aerial firefighter pilots often use helicopters with attached Bambi buckets or hanging snorkels to collect water for air attacks on fires. The sources of water for these aerial firefighters can range from large lakes and reservoirs to pumpkins, which are small portable swimming pools installed by firefighters on the ground, and which tend to be slightly larger than the Bambi bucket. The pumpkin is a solution for areas where transit time to a known lake or reservoir is too long, but it requires time and personnel to set up, and a highly skilled pilot to safely access the pumpkin with the Bambi bucket. In still other scenarios, it may be desirable to obtain water from local swimming pools, particularly in areas where water sources are in scarce supply, and/or too remote from the fire location to allow for effective aerial firefighting.
When helicopters are used for aerial fighting, the pilot may in some cases be able to locate a body of water without assistance. But the helicopter may not have enough altitude to be able to see all bodies of water that are within range for firefighting efforts. Additionally, the pilot is engaged in operating the aircraft safely during the firefighting efforts, often by literally flying the helicopter through fire. The pilot often will not have enough time to look for water sources. What is desired is a system and method that detects water bodies within a selected range of a fire location and that either relays the water resource location to the helicopter pilot in a format that can be understood quickly, or simply vectors the pilot to the water resource by providing a heading and a range to the water body.
One way to accomplish the above could be to detect bodies of water using satellite imagery. But detecting bodies of water or other regions of interest, particularly in multispectral satellite images, is currently a manual process, where an analyst examines the image to find the water bodies. The analysts must then superimpose the imagery over a geo-referenced image, so that the analyst can gather each region's latitude and longitude and manually record the data. Finally, the analyst must relay the position data of the water resource to the aerial firefighter pilot.
In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system and method for asset detection relief that can locate disaster relief assets such as bodies of water for remote firefighting efforts. Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a system and method for asset detection relief that displays geo-referenced, automatically detected swimming pools from satellite images that will quickly and accurately provide information of alternate, potentially strategic water sources for aerial firefighters. Another object of the present invention is to provide a system and method for asset detection relief that can generate location data for water body resources in a format that is quickly and easily understood by an aerial firefighter pilot. Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a system and method for asset detection relief that can generate location data for water body resources and simultaneously disseminate that location data to a plurality of firefighting assets to minimize the flight time of each aerial asset to the water body and to ensure that assets are not vectored to the same water body. Still another object of the device is to provide a system and method for asset detection relief that is easy to manufacture and use in a cost-effective manner.